


The Wormtail Meta

by bramblePatch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Archived from Bramblepatch Blog, Betrayal, Gen, Hogwarts House Sorting, Meta Essays, Nonfiction, pictured: bramble's longstanding weakness for irredeemable murderboys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 17:16:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16836961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblePatch/pseuds/bramblePatch
Summary: Peter Pettigrew didnothingquite a lot of things wrong. Collected short essays examining the life, character, and choices of Peter "Mister Wormtail" Pettigrew, originally posted on my Tumblr.





	1. In Defense of Peter Pettigrew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr August 2013, in a reblog to a post about the fate of the marauders that ended with the words "and fuck you pettigrew."

sit down and let me tell you about the Marauders, Peter Pettigrew, and how the Hogwarts sorting system fails kids in the most spectacular manner possible

Hogwarts students are sorted into one of four houses at age **11**. Everyone acts like it’s your greatest strength that determines it, but that’s not really true, is it? When was the last time you looked at an eleven-year-old kid and thought _ah yes I can perfectly determine the virtue that will define this person for the rest of their life?_ Pretty much fucking never, kids are **kids**. Different people have different strengths but you know what else makes a huge fucking difference? Which strengths that person is _encouraged to cultivate_ during their formative years.

That’s what the house system at Hogwarts does. It puts the kids in the environment where they can **grow into what they value**. That’s why the all-knowing Hat takes a kid’s preferences into consideration. That’s why the know it all who’d already read all her text books ended up in Gryffindor and why the ambitious, underhanded parselmouth was allowed to say “ _Not Slytherin_.”

Peter Pettigrew **was a Gryffindor.**

 **Peter Pettigrew** , age eleven, _**wanted to be brave. Wanted to be heroic. Wanted to do great things and be recognized for** **it.** _

And he was best friends with James Potter and Sirius Black.

Now, obviously, not every Gryffindor can be the designated hero. It’s a competitive house, by nature! But Potter and Black were the golden boys of their class. They were awful and brilliant. They were bullies. They were prodigies. And they _liked Pettigrew_. 

Now, in their shadow was probably the safest, most exhilarating place for pretty much anyone else in their year. You got first-row seats to all of their hijinks - even the ones most of the student body never dreamed were going on - and you’d never, ever be the target.

But here’s the thing. _Peter wasn’t just a spectator_. He was **smart**. He was **capable**. There’s only so far having brilliant friends will take you, especially when it comes to complicated, personalized spellwork, and **Peter Pettigrew was an animagus at age fifteen**. He was instrumental to their schemes, in a lot of ways that Lupin _wasn’t_. Lupin was the **excuse** for the great animagus caper, but Pettigrew was the **grease in the gears**. Do you think Padfoot could get anywhere near the Whomping Willow? Do you think Prongs could scout the secret passages of the school? Do you think it’s a coincidence that Wormtail’s credit on the map comes **before** Padfoot or Prongs? The Mauraders needed a clever, small, nimble agent to do what they did, and that agent was **Peter Motherfucking Pettigrew**.

And yet.

Pettigrew wasn’t the _hero_. He spent every day of his school career being told that bravery and bravado and public recognition were the ideal to strive for - he was a _Gryiffindor_. And he was the tagalong. Potter and Black were the geniuses, the darlings of their classmates. Pettigrew was always clever and observant - is there any way that he _didn’t_ know the Transfiguration teacher thought he “wasn’t up to their level”? Him, who could turn into a rat at will, who knew the corridors and hallways and secret passages of the school as well as any person alive and better than most.

It rankled. It had to. Gryffindors can make good sidekicks, but they make awful lackeys. They don’t like being out of the spotlight, they don’t like being looked down on. And a more bombastic Gryffindor would have been hard to live with, if put in Pettigrew’s place. Look at Harry’s classmates! When Ron feels overshadowed, he sulks, he shouts, he throws things and gives people the silent treatment, sometimes for months. When Hermione feels underappreciated, she bristles, she retreats behind her intellectual superiority, she refuses to be reasoned with. Seamus grasps at the most damaging rumor about his rival and fans the flames, Lavender and Parvati become increasingly cliquish.

Pettigrew didn’t do that. Pettigrew was a people-pleaser. Pettigrew didn’t rock the boat. Pettigrew _stewed_. 

And then, after seven years of second billing, of brilliant magical and exploratory achievements that no one outside their group could ever know about, of _trailing after Black and Potter,_ he enters the adult world in the midst of the war. He and his friends get drawn into the elite forces of the white hats. The stakes have skyrocketed.

Potter’s the one who draws the most accolades, of course, but that’s only to be expected. Black chases the risks, and that’s to be expected.

And then there’s the great task for Pettigrew. The most important thing he’s ever been trusted with. And it’s entrusted to him precisely _because no one would believe him capable of it._

Peter the sidekick. _Peter the second-best_. **Peter the slightly hopeless**.

Exactly how much more persuasion do you think Voldemort had to offer to get him to switch sides?

So ok.

Fuck you, Pettigrew.

But fuck you, Potter. Fuck you, Black. Fuck you, every crack that Pettigrew slipped through, and fuck you, every adult and authority figure who let him slip through those cracks. And that includes you, _Lupin_ , you were supposed to be a prefect and his _friend_.

But especially: fuck you, Voldemort. Let’s put the blame where blame is due - with the monster who habitually preyed on the weak, the isolated, and the overly ambitious, who pulled in a bright, insecure 21 year old, promised him **respect** , and stripped him of his _friends_ , his _freedom_ , his _hand_ , and ultimately his _life_.


	2. Peter the Hatstall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr July 2017.

Thinking about Peter Pettigrew again, because this is my life I guess.

Word of God is that he was a hatstall and could have gone Slytherin? And like? I actually feel that Slytherin would have been a much better house for him - not because of OMG EVIL, but because Peter would have been happier in an environment that taught kids to cultivate useful relationships rather than one that taught kids to seek glory.

He’d probably have done better under a Head of House that actually took an interest in the kids, too - I love McGonnagal, she’s easily one of the best teachers at Hogwarts, but honestly she’s a very hands-off chaperone and she openly admits that she was hard on Peter. Slughorn does seem to take his role as mentor very seriously, if only because it’s the basis of his primary means of networking, and I think that if Peter had been on his radar he would have seen the kid’s tendency to run after more talented classmates as a strength, not a failing.

And given that the Hat wanted to put him in Slytherin, I really have to suspect that Peter asked for Gryffindor, and for a lot of the same reasons that Harry did - his new friends were either already in Gryffindor or completely confident that’s where they’d end up, and those new friends had had absolutely nothing positive to say about Slytherin. Peter may well have figured it was better to be a sidekick in Gryffindor house than to be sorted Slytherin and not only be friendless but earn the enmity of Sirius Black and James Potter.

And that’s super sad, honestly, because it’s pretty much where he ended up - ten years later and at much higher stakes.


	3. I mean, it's not like he's pulled this kind of thing before.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly I don't believe tumblr's date stamps on these, given that it's two posts that are marked as two years apart but are in the same conversation. ehhhh whatever. On Peter's final fate in Deathly Hallows.

maybe I’m just way overdue for a reread of DH, but was Peter Pettigrew’s death ever actually _confirmed_? Like, was the body ever examined by anyone who had the time to properly check for vitals? Or are we just taking Harry’s word for it that he knows what he saw and Peter is totally dead now, guys, he swears?

I mean, it’s not like Mister Wormtail has a history of dramatically faking his death and then fucking off to hide in plain sight for a dozen years, or anything. That’d just be silly.

  * Comment from morelovelyandmoretemperate: _I’m 99.99999% positive he’s dead, because wasn’t his death the result of attempting to break a life debt? Didn’t he attack Harry, and then his own hand strangled him? Magic don’t play that way._



Tbh I’ve got a few issues with that line of argument? It might be accurate! But it assumes some things about magical theory that we were never actually told or shown.

I mean, first of all, we know almost nothing of what a life debt actually entails? We have some vague implications from Dumbledore, but he’s certainly not above shading the truth, withholding important details, or even outright lying to Harry - and Harry almost never questions when Dumbledore tells him he’s special and protected. Not during the old man’s life, anyway.

Harry should have immediately gone and tried to find out what is known about life debts and how they function, if Dumbledore wasn’t going to give him an adequate explanation. But hey, the kid was a Gryffindor, not a Ravenclaw.

I also didn’t get the impression that Pettigrew was actually trying to attack? Not fatally, at least - that would have been outright suicidal, and not for any life debt related reason. It was standing policy within Voldemort’s forces that only the Dark Lord got to kill Harry Potter.

There’s also the fact that the silver hand was a magical artifact created by Voldemort almost a year after the life debt was established. We don’t know how that may have interacted with the existing binding magic, of course - Voldemort may or may not have thought to give it some kind of “insulation” against other long term enchantments in play.

We do have another example of an old, deep, wandless, “life for a life” protective binding, though, in Lily’s sacrifice. And that one didn’t need the help of any outside player to work.

So yeah, it’s very possible that things went down exactly as we were led to believe, and Peter was killed when the terms of his life debt to Harry were violated.

I just don’t think we can rule out that in allowing Harry to escape, he instead discharged his life debt, and then either faked his death and bolted, or was executed by Voldemort off screen.

He’s probably dead. But if I were Narcissa I’d be doing something to clear the rats out of the basement, and counting the paws on any I managed to catch. Just in case.


End file.
